Sunday, April 15, 2012

DIY Nail Polish Rack

I believe I've mentioned that I watch a lot of youtube beauty videos. Well a couple of weeks ago I saw DulceCandy87's video DIY: Nail Polish Rack. In the video she makes a nail polish rack out of wood and hot glue then spray paints it. It seemed easy enough, and I told my husband about it. He said, "I could do better than that." LOL Anytime I show him something he says that he could make it better. So, I thought why not let him try. ;) Below we have a guest post from my dear husband Wesley. I will insert my comments in blue.

Materials:

¾” x 24” x 36” edge-glued aspen panel - 1 (we wanted 1/2". 3/4" was overkill and more expensive, but all of the 1/2" boards were warped at that particular lowes)

½” x 4” x 36” craft board - 2

3/8” x 3 x 24 craft board – 10

Finishing nails – handful

1 ½” corner brace (L bracket) – 4

Wall anchors and screws - 4

White Rustoleum spray paint with primer– 3

Crystal clear spray enamel – 1

This project had a couple of difficult points within it, but
overall it was fairly straightforward. Mainly
it consisted of a lot of butt joints and nailing.

The first thing that I did was nail one of the two side
boards to the main panel, being extra careful to keep the edges square.

I measured basically at 4” intervals down the main panel,
drawing lines all the way across. These
lines marked the positioning of our shelves.
In hindsight I should have
duplicated these lines on the backside of the main panel. This would have saved me a few headaches
later on.

Next came nailing in the shelf boards. The first thing that we tried to do was glue
them to the main panel. This would have
worked fine to set them for nailing, but we didn’t have any clamps.

Next, we tried using some hot glue to set
them.

Not a great idea. The glue doesn’t hold that strongly and it
had a tendency to harden somewhat before I could even place the board. (In Dulcecandy87's video she glued the whole thing with hot glue and apparently it worked fine for her, but I'm glad we ended up using nails) Therefore, all forms of glue were discarded,
opting to rely on our finishing nails

First
I nailed them to the side board that was already attached. Then I nailed on our second side. Next is the part where I wish I had
transcribed my lines onto the back of the panel. I basically had to use a blind nailing
technique to drive nails into the middle of the shelves through the panel. I won’t lie; a few nails missed their mark
and had to be redone. In the future I
would transcribe the lines and probably drill very small pilot holes. I may consider using trim screws to attach
the shelves instead of finishing nails as well.
But these nails in the middle really added support to the shelves and
took out the wobble that was seen while they were only attached to the sides.

Next came the painting and then enameling. No pictures were taken of this process, but I’m
sure you can use your imagination. I
used 3 cans of white spray paint and 1 can of crystal clear enamel on top of
that.

The final step – Mounting.
We decided to use L-brackets to attach the rack to the wall. I spaced two brackets 16” apart on both the
top and bottom of the rack. I then
attached it to the wall using anchors that had been screwed into the
drywall. I don’t have the sizes or brand
of these, but any should work.

And tada!

All I had do was organize my polishes. I went with a color organization as opposed to brand.

I've almost got it filled up too! Since Wes thinks his first shot at this was less than perfect (I think it is wonderful), I'll let him try it again on a second one sometime. :)

Well, thanks for stopping by! I have polk-dot nails for my next post. So, check back soon! :D